The documentary "Tyson," created by James Toback, focuses on boxing legend Mike Tyson, whom Toback met when the boxer was 19 years old. The Daily Californian sat down with the director to discuss his experience making the film and his perspective on Tyson's life.

Daily Californian: Is "Tyson" simply a cohesive recapitulation of Mike Tyson's career?

James Toback: No. The movie gradually disimbues people's strongly held and misguided views of who he is. You get emotional evidence that is gradually transmitted almost minute by minute by what's on screen, and that becomes a special kind of movie-watching, to see preconceived notions reversed. It's totally different from coming in with no expectation.

DC: What would you identify as the pivotal moment of the film in shaping Tyson's trajectory?

JT: It'd have to be early in the film, when he's in talking about his childhood, almost in tears, almost hyperventilating, about never letting himself be bullied again. And he says, "And I knew nobody would ever fuck with me physically again," and then he's all choked up, and he says … "Because if they did I would fucking kill 'em." I think in that passage you see the fear and the rage. It's all encapsulated in that minute of film, and it sets up the whole movie. It's the key to understanding everything you see in him.

DC: Was there anything that shocked you during the interview?

JT: I was surprised by his admission of fear. Fear was in him 95 percent of the time. He intuited that his documentary would enrich his understanding of himself because he's a mystery to himself. There's so many things going on in his brain that he can't draw conclusions about himself. When he saw the movie at Sundance, he said, "People used to say how scared they are of me … and watching the movie tonight I thought, 'Wow, I'm scared of that guy.'"

DC: It reminds me of a form of psychological therapy where patients are filmed and are shown the tape-a kind of third-person perspective.

JT: Yeah. It's a perspective you rarely have. He was saying, "No wonder. I'm scared of that guy."

DC: Do you see Mike Tyson's life as resembling a Greek tragedy?

JT: I do. His psychological portrait is one of who starts with nothing, rises through his own powers to great heights and brings himself down through hubris, which is certainly what he did through pride and overreaching ambition and confidence, which he refers to as "megalomania." And in his case, it's a double-Greek tragedy, because he then goes to prison, which is the nadir, comes back, wins the world title and then crashes again.

DC: There are so many moments (when) he seems poetic. Do you think he's also more intellectual than people suppose him to be?

JT: Everyone's surprised at how well he speaks, and I don't mean that just in a classically grammatical sense. He has a very fresh, visceral, personal relation to language, almost a physical one. He says words in such a fresh way. He's definitely speaking throughout with no sense of censorship or guardedness.

DC: Could you go over your personal history with Mike?

JT: I met him when he was 19. He was on the set of "Pick Up Artist", which I was directing, to meet [Robert] Downey [Jr.]. Mike and I decided to walk through Central Park at five in the morning; we kind of hit it off discussing boxing. I was talking about where I was 19, psychologically, and I mentioned my LSD flip-out.

DC: And that was mentioned in one of your movies.

JT: That's right. In "Harvard Man." What happened after that was he started talking about his own curiosity about madness. "What does it mean when you say you're insane?" You don't have that kind of curiosity unless you feel some personal dynamic and relation to madness.

DC: Do you think that Mike Tyson was meant to live in a different era? That he was born in the wrong time?

JT: I think he would have been a complete anomaly in whenever he lived. That's why the film is so fragmentary. He's too many parts put into an apparent whole to fit into any era or social situation. He is a permanent and serious misfit in the purest sense.

Tags: MIKE TYSON, JAMES TOBACK, TYSON